Kor Grundig
INQUISITOR KOR GRUNDIG, ORDO HERETICUS The feral worlds of the Imperium all have one thing in common – the men and women born on their forsaken soils are forced by their hostile surroundings into learning how to survive. The many dangers they face, be it carnosaurs, meteor showers or simply other people, quickly whittle out the weak, leaving only those in the peak of physical condition. Violence is no stranger to these people, and every tribe knows the sharp end of a spear from the haft. This dangerous life breeds tribes who know only war, tribes who would kill other men for their food rather than hunt beasts themselves. On the world of Solonius in the Carthax sector there was one tribe whose name was whispered around campfires as the harbingers of death, the Bloodied Knife. Some said they were the Star-Emperor’s chosen, and they meted out His disapproval with their curved blades. The very rumour of their sighting would cause whole tribes to abandon lush valleys and seek shelter in the rocky wastes above, willing to take their chances in the winter rather than face the Bloodied Knife. One of their number was especially feared: a giant by the name of Kor. Kor was said to be able to strike men down with a glance, and uproot trees with his bare arms. He could kill a score of men single-handed, and wore the scalps of all his victims on his belt. If the Bloodied Knife were the Star-Emperor’s chosen, then Kor was His champion. It was during a routine visit to the world by the League of Blackships that Kor came to the attention of the Inquisition. Every generation or so, the Star-Emperor would send His apostles to Solonius to demand the turning over of the witches and shamen, for which the tribesmen were rewarded with a blessing from one of His emissaries. On this visit though, the natives appeared only in dribs and drabs, and all begged the Adepta Sororitas and Stormtroopers present to leave before the Bloodied Knife arrived. They had been spotted not ten miles from the shuttles landing site and it was believed that they were intent on making trophies of the visitors, the only group whose blood their blades had not tasted. Realising that the presence of the Bloodied Knife was keeping the locals and their psychic prisoners away, the leader of the landing party, Inquisitor Kaleb Heratsi, struck out with a contingent of Stormtroopers in a Chimera to locate the Bloodied Knife and either drive them off, or come to some kind of understanding with them. It was not long before the Bloodied Knife let themselves be known, and the avalanche of rocks they unleashed to block the Chimera’s path proved they were in no mood for discussion. Heratsi had the top hatch of the personnel carrier opened and he stood up in full view of the tribesmen, sword in one hand and bolt pistol in the other. He fired one shot into a nearby tree and blew it into splinters in the hope that the primitives would be scared off. He was quite disappointed when they remained standing, and was surprised when the biggest of the group began shouting and gesticulating at him, his twin knives held threateningly in front of him. Impressed, Heratsi had his Stormtroopers stand down before they riddled the tribesmen with hellgun beams, and climbed out of the Chimera and jumped down to the ground to face off with the bellowing monster. The brute came at him quickly, but Heratsi’s noble swordsmanship was the match of the man’s blows, and the inquisitor kept his foe at bay with a flurry of parries. The brute became tired, and Heratsi found an opening with which he dealt a blow with the flat of his blade to the tribesman’s head, knocking him to the ground. Heratsi kicked away his knives, and looked down at his opponent. Knowing he had been defeated, the brute offered his neck for the killing blow, but instead was offered a hand to bring him to his feet. Kor Grundig and the rest of the Bloodied Knife entered into the service of the Inquisition that day. Grundig was an acolyte for over forty years before he was granted his own seal at nigh-on seventy. He remained a ferocious warrior during his service to Heratsi, and despite gaining an aptitude for study following bionic replacement of part of his brain after a life-threatening head injury; he was always happiest at the forefront of a charge into a nest of heretics and, as an inquisitor in his own right, little changed. Able to call on the might of the Imperial Guard and the Adepta Sororitas with a flash of his seal, Grundig initiated many bloody pogroms across the Carthax Sector at the slightest hint of heresy. Grundig was rumoured to have initiated the raising of a whole regiment of guardsmen on the world Derun, ahead of a personal crusade into the Ork-held system Ivar. However that crusade never came to be because of the repercussions of the so-called Schism of the Conclave Venixian. The death of two inquisitors with known grudges against each other was the catalyst for over a year of near open warfare between the members of the Conclave Venixian that eventually culminated in the destruction of ten square kilometres of industrial sprawl in the outskirts of Venix’s principle hive after the explosion of a plasma generator. The shameful incident is little talked about now in the Carthax Sector, and though many inquisitors were blamed for the atrocity, no individual man or woman was singled out for blame. Those inquisitors that admit to being involved in the madness claim that it was Grundig that had been behind it all: he had been the one to arrange the first two deaths and had then set about dragging more and more inquisitors into the mess until he managed to dupe one into blowing up the plasma reactor to destroy any evidence of his plans. Some say that it was his plan to cripple Venix’s industrial capabilities and pitch the sector into economic strife, while others say that such lofty thoughts were beyond the man, and he simply stirred up old enmities within the Conclave and then made his escape just before the futility of it all was realised. Whatever the truth, Grundig’s bloodthirsty past drew him to follow the Istvaanian path, and in the Carthax Sector at least, he succeeded with its ideals and left the sector in turmoil. He has not been seen since the end of the Schism, and though rumours of his demise persist, there are many that say that the body presented to the Conclave was simply one of the other members of the Bloodied Knife and that Grundig is still at large, plotting his next campaign of violence.